Banana Counting Monkey

Saturday, June 01, 2002:

"If you're raising money [for a terrorist organization], this is the place to do it," he said. "You put all that in jeopardy by walking into a supermarket with a suicide bomb. We know that there is substantial terrorist presence in Canada, and I think that [terrorists] are going to be very reluctant to take away the one place where they have, in some ways, been left to themselves."

The first Al-Qaida terrorist the US caught was Ahmed Ressam in late 1999 when he entered the US with a truckload of explosives from Canada. Our government has not acted to stop terrorists from operating in Canada. I only hope that people in the US become aware that the appeasement of the Europeans is perhaps less dangerous to them that the appeasement of the Canadian government.

Canadian-based terrorists have been arrested in the United States, Britain, France, Jordan, Algeria, Pakistan, Azerbaijan and other nations.

Canada's failure has also caused severe troubles within Canada's refugee communities, where militants have hijacked cultural organizations and religious institutions for their own ends. And it has helped create an international climate in which global terrorist organizations such as al-Qaeda have thrived.

Canada may not be the only nation that has been negligent on this front, but for a country its size, Canada harbours far more terrorists than it should, possibly more in proportion than any other Western industrial power.
[...]

A few days after suicide terrorists rammed loaded passenger planes into the World Trade Center, Jean Chrétien stood in the House of Commons to make a remarkable statement. "I am not aware at this time," the Prime Minister said, "of a cell known to the police to be operating in Canada with the intention of carrying out terrorism in Canada or elsewhere."
[..]

It was a confounding pronouncement because Canada's intelligence, police and immigration services had been warning the government for years that the world's major terrorist groups had all established offshore bases in Canadian cities, and that they were using Canada as a staging ground for political and religious violence around the world.
[...]

To make matters worse, some Liberal MPs openly support groups such as the Tamil Tigers. Liberal MP Jim Karygiannis has attended Tamil Tigers support functions. Paul Martin and Maria Minna were guest speakers at a May, 2000, dinner hosted by the Federation of Associations of Canadian Tamils, despite warnings the group was a front for the Tigers. Citizenship Immigration Canada gives $2-million annually to the Tamil Eelam society, which CSIS considers a terrorist front. When the deputy minister of Immigration tried to cut off the group's government financing in 1997, she was overruled by Lucienne Robillard, then minister of Immigration. "We are to forget everything," an Immigration official later advised colleagues.
[...]

It [The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, or LTTE] is also, to a large extent, tacitly aided and financed by supporters in Canada. The Canadian Security Intelligence Service estimates that up to $2-million a year is clandestinely funnelled to the Tigers' military purchasing arm from front organizations in Canada. But the total amount could be 10 to 20 times that sum once the proceeds of organized crime are factored in.
[..]

The LTTE operates a taxation system in Canada that extorts money from Tamil families and businesses. The RCMP reported in 1999 that "new Tamil refugees in Canada are traditionally contacted by Tamil Tigers from organizations [that] promote LTTE interests and collect funds. LTTE sympathizers in Canada are under pressure to provide funding to the Tigers in Sri Lanka. All Tamils are encouraged to donate 50¢ each day to the LTTE."

The Canadian government is not going to change its ways anytime soon. It's lack of action and denial after September 11th has demonstrated this. For God's sake, please be aware of the threat that Canada is harbouring. They won't listen to Canadians who are outraged by this. The only thing they respond to is massive pressure from the US. Canada's role as a harbour of terrorists needs to become an issue. It needs to become commonly known and denigrated in the International community, because if there is one thing that the Canadian government is sensitive to, it is the opinion that other countries hold of it.

Orange County California wants the land a church is on in order to build a shopping centre. Church doesn't want to sell? No problem. Expropriate the land so that Orange County can have its Costco. OC gets to decide how much they want to pay for the land too. How generous!

The "No Logo" crowd would no doubt portray this as a corporation ganging up on a church, but then they don't really care about churches, which are tools of the phallocentric oppressors.

It is not clear why the Left is so smug about its supposed brilliance. Under Jimmy Carter, interest rates nearly hit 20 percent. Was the Left convinced that Gerald Ford, Carter's predecessor, maintained inflation in the four-percent range because he could not match Carter's ability to multiply mortgage rates by percentages five times higher? Moreover, under Carter, an antediluvian Islamic cleric held our entire nation hostage for so long that the Ayatollah's drama literally created a steady viewership over fourteen months for a new network television show, Nightline. The Carter years also saw the United States give up the Panama Canal, the Soviets invade Afghanistan and extend their hegemony into Africa, even prompting new Marxist rumblings in South America. In response, Carter pulled our Olympic athletes out of world competition to make a moral statement that he understood better than did a less sophisticated Leonid Brezhnev.

With Reagan the Actor, inflation plunged, the bond market revived, the economy boomed, the 52 hostages were freed bloodlessly from Iran, Libya's Col. Qaddafi was disabused of continuing his role on the cutting edge of state terrorism , the Sandinistas were stopped in Nicaragua, Communism was eradicated from Granada, and the evil Soviet Empire began to crumble from Africa to Eastern Europe to
Asia. His successor, the first President Bush, finished the job of assuring Communism's demise, built an international coalition that freed Kuwait, nabbed Panamanian strongman Manual Noriega and closed down his national drug store.

For two years, from 1992-1994, the Clintons of Yale came to town. Perspicacious in their uniquely liberal way, they turned the armed forces into a social laboratory, failed miserably in an attempt to socialize healthcare, and brilliantly managed to achieve something that half a century of dummies could not even conceptualize: They inspired the American electorate to entrust both Houses of Congress to the Republicans. In time, the man whose haircut had stopped traffic at LAX airport was dismantling welfare as we knew it, cutting the deficit, preaching fiscal prudence, backing away from Joycelyn Elders after 15 months and Lani Guinier after what seemed like 15 days, and behaving himself — at least in public. Even so, in the one area that most dramatically remains the ultimate province of the Presidency — the role as commander-in-chief of the armed forces of the United States — this most brilliant of our recent presidents allowed Osama bin Laden to build an al Qaeda terror infrastructure.

Of course, every Canadian leader for the last forty years has fit the Democrat "smart" model. Which is why our dollar which was once worth more than the USD is now 2/3 of a USD as is our living standard. Our unemployment rate is around one and a half times the US at the best of times, double at the worst.

Yet another reason to go to Miss Hawkgirl's blog and vote for "stupid". It's only the smart thing to do.

Thursday, May 30, 2002:

I fear that they will be successful in pressuring our new Premier Ernie Eves, who has lately been selling out the Common Sense Revolution at bargain basement prices. Here's what I expect we'll see from (one-term) Ernie soon.

"Today we're happy to announce a temporary funding measure for the TDSB that will ensure our children receive the best education possible. We look forward to working with our friends in the TDSB in the Future. We're sorry for all of that Fiscal prudence stuff we did. Please vote for us. We promise to be nice from now on.... Please vote for us, we really want you to vote for us, don't be mad at us. We know all of the TDSB's problems are all our fault."

Here's what I wish he'd say.

"If I were selling my products to the TDSB, I'd change my terms to cash up front. The board will live within its means or it will go bankrupt."

Of course, when one looks at the ICRC's news releases, there's not a word to be seen about it. It would seem that they are ushering the MDA in through the back door. At night. Under a trenchcoat. The only acknoweldgement of the MDA's move towards membership is an update of their links page, right at the bottom.

Well, there are a few details. First, the MDA will have to wait around 18 months for full membership in the ICRC. What are the odds that this process will be stretched out indefinitely in order to please the Red Cresent societies, or be revoked if Israel acts to defend itself? The ICRC has given themselves a low cost lever to grandstand with the next time the IDF has to clean out the PA territories.

The Jpost article mentions the pressure the American Red Cross has been putting on the ICRC to admit the MDA. I took a look, they have indeed. There's a few dozen press releases chronicling their efforts to get the MDA recognized.

It's a start, but let's face it, if the ICRC was serious, the Magen David Adom would be a member tomorrow. It does not require eighteen months (550 days) just to process a membership.

The last $2 million comes after Libya is removed from the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism. We guess that means if you haven't blown up any American planes recently all is forgiven. If you live long enough and have enough money you can get away with anything. That's a nice message to send in the middle of a war against terrorism.

Some Pan Am 103 family members have been transformed into remarkably successful lobbyists. The Libyans are well aware of this. Over the past decade we have received letters, phone calls, even a personal visit from a variety of folks who told us they could make it worth our while if we just weren't so stubborn and recognized that Gadhafi had really changed.

[...]

But what about the victims? What about a short, dark-haired and irrepressibly lively drama student from Syracuse University named Theo Cohen? Somehow she, and the 269 others who died horribly that December day over 13 years ago, have been lost and forgotten, in those chummy little dinners described in yesterday's Wall Street Journal, in a private room in Paris's elegant George V hotel, where the proposed settlement offer was hatched between our lawyers and lawyers for a mass murderer.

This is not a product liability suit. It's not even a suit against an incompetent and indifferent airline like Pan Am. And it's certainly not about making vast sums of money. Mass murder and terrorism are at the very core of this and even though over a decade has passed we can't forget that. And we won't.

We would have been willing and even eager to accept a no-strings compensation agreement-even if it was far less than the fabled and historic $10 million. But to tie compensation to the enrichment and rehabilitation of Moammar Gadhafi and his clique--we can't do it. As a result we may lose the compensation lottery and wind up with nothing.

So be it.

We are not particularly brave, moral or crazy and we certainly aren't rich. In the end we just have to be able to live with ourselves.

Because we, the audience, have to empathize with Anakin Skywalker. We have to. We have to *care* about his decisions. We have to *believe* that people can like and respect him, and not just be wowed by his uber-Jedi skills. We have to empathize with his inner conflicts, his conflicts between adhering to the Jedi Code and doing his own thing. However, Anakin Skywalker is *not* likeable, and the audience does not empathize with him at all because we see no inner conflict. What we see is a bunch of hateful whining. (Think of Willem DeFoe's Green Goblin in Spider-Man. Not a very likeable character, but compelling and empathetic because of the conflict we can see and experience.) So who cares how or why Anakin Skywalker becomes Darth Vader? I don't. Not anymore. And I really wanted to. I'll go see Episode III only so I can watch Obi-Wan Kenobi kick his whiny little ass all over the place.

Well, if recent reports of Al-Qaida rooting deep within Pakistan, aided and abetted by the Pakistani government are true, then perhaps the US will turn against Pakistan. Noam, Fisk and their like will, of course, wax at length about how treacherous the US is to their allies while ignoring the reason why the US may act against former allies. Like Iraq for example. The US supported Saddam in the 80s against Iran, but was the US supposed to just shrug and say "well, that's the price of friendship" when Saddam invaded Kuwait? If Pakistan is harbouring Al-Qaida, then the US would be justified in dropping that nation as an ally. The whole idea of making Pakistan an ally was to cooperate against Al-Qaida. If one party to a deal doesn't fulfull their end of the bargain, then the other party is justified in callnig off the pretense that the deal has become.

Unfortunately, to hold to a deal despite knowledge of being double crossed is expected of Western nations in this day and age. The US was expected to hold to arms control deals with the USSR despite documented Soviet violations. The Israelis are expected to keep to the terms of the Oslo accords even although the Palestinians have systematically violated its terms.

It's time for the West to get serious about its agreements with other countries. It's similar to the coalition argument of last fall, of "what is more important, the coalition, or the achievement of the coalition's goals?" (Thankfully the US chose the latter). What is more important? The relationship between two nations, or the goals that bought them together in the first place? In the same way that the world had to re-learn not to attack the US and expect to get off easy, it must learn that to double cross the US is to lose everything you'd gained and instead gain a very powerful enemy.

Pakistan is going to be the test for George Bush's claim that a nation is either with the civilized world or against it. If Pakistan is successfully able to keep its feet in both camps of the war without paying a steep price, then other nations, such as the Saudis will draw their lessons accordingly.

When I use the term democratic, it is generally in a negative pejorative sense. To me it means my neighbours voting themselves some of my money, in effect mugging me by proxy when the state taxes me for their perceived benefit. To me 'democratic' means allowing my neighbour a say in how I build my house and how I raise my children and what chemicals get put in my food and water regardless of what I want. Democracy is at its core about denying the concept of ownership, even of your own body, because other people get to use the violence of the state via their ballots to reduce my actual ownership. When the state intermediates itself, it negates society, because state and society are two completely different things. The morality of several ownership, even of yourself, gets superceded by the force based political state.

So when I hear people like Brendan say something is 'anti-democratic' I usually assume that whatever they are referring to is actually a good thing. The US Constitution for example is quite anti-democratic because it severely constrains (in theory at least) the ability of people to vote for laws that would abridge liberties (such as freedom of speech or the right to own the means to defend yourself)... so things that act as a check on that violence backed tyranny of the majority called 'democracy' are generally a splendid idea. For me, voluntary social interaction is the source of legitimacy, not the sanctification of the ballot box and the violent intermediation that springs from it.

This is a discussion to keep in mind when you next hear an NDPer speaking about how they want a "more democratic society" in Canada. I've had that discussion with an NDPer, and her desire was rather explicitly linked to the notion that if enough of the population voted for something then it would be justifed. She then went on to note how people in Canada "don't know enough to vote" and that voting should be restricted to those who are properly educated on the issues.

Needless to say, she thought herself sufficiently educated. She never told me who, in her version of an ideal Canada, would decide what was "sufficient education".